Hospital psychologist pens book on curbing destructive behavior

Published 6:00 pm, Tuesday, January 19, 2010

BIG SPRING — Drawing from her work with Big Spring State Hospital patients — and a little push from God — Chief Psychologist Melanie Gordon Sheets has written "Out of Control."

The 14-chapter book is subtitled "A Dialectical Behavior Therapy-Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Workbook; Getting Control of our Emotions and Emotion-Driven Behavior." The book was published in May 2009 and is available on Amazon and eBay.

It is meant to teach people how to gain control over out-of-control thoughts, behaviors and emotions and tries to explain why people engage in destructive coping behaviors like drugs, alcohol, verbal and physical violence and other things, according to information from Sheets.

"It helps people understand why people are the way they are and why they do the things they do," Sheets said, adding it's written in "down-to-earth language."

"I think it helps engage them in the program," she said.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy was developed in the early 1990s by psychologist and author Marsha Linehan. Since then, many people have used it, often for borderline personalities. Big Spring State Hospital began using it in 2003 and employs a mixture of DBT and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. "It was the therapy," Sheets said of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.

CBT gained prominence in the 1970s and is used at the Adult Probation Office in Midland and a prison in California.

When she first started at the hospital, Sheets said patients were given packets and handouts. The worksheets help people work through their initial emotional reaction to their "wise mind," meant to help people come to a rational solution for working out their problems and figure out what's next.

The last chapter is where the person develops a game plan for recovery and "action steps" where the person picks and chooses what they can do according to their situation.

"The impetus for writing it was actually the patients. They kept asking for more," Sheets said. Also, she said the "spiritual pressure" was intense.

"I set a timeline and just did it. I had no choice," Sheets said, adding it started as a Christian workbook and evolved into more of a secular work so it could be used at the hospital.

Hospital spokeswoman Valerie Avery said it could probably be used for people outside therapeutic settings as well.

Ed Moughon, superintendent of Big Spring State Hospital, said he's lucky to work with someone like Sheets. "She is one of those folks that is such a believer in this concept of recovery that … she built this self help book … specifically for our type of customer," Moughon said. "These are tools people get to take home with them. They'll come back to the hospital, maybe in a year or so (after a relapse), and will have worked through a bunch of that book."

This will lead to shorter stays. "She's gotten a lot of inquiries from other hospitals looking to pick it up as part of their curriculum," Moughon said.